Last night was the Gala event for the 13th annual Leo Awards. The best of British Columbia's TV & movie industry gathered to hand out their top awards. This years event was held at the Hotel Vancouver, after a scheduling change prevented them from holding it at their usual place, the Westing Bayshore. With the change in venue came a few challenges.

The most notable challenge was the red carpet set up on Georgia street. In the past, at the Bayshore, the carpet was set up along a very quiet and spacious sidewalk along side the hotels convention centre. This set up was great for everyone involved, as it was spacious & well lit with natural light when it is sunny. This year however, the red carpet was set up on the sidewalk of a mains treet that dozens of people use every minute. The carpet itself took up about 2/3 of the sidewalk, leaving a slim 3-5 ft ledge for fans & onlookers, uncredited media, autograph hounds & passer bys to navigate, with a lane of a busy thoroughfare just behind them. Thankfully for the awards there was no incidents with traffic hitting any people, despite many people, myself included, occasionally using the 1st lave of the street to walk in.

The cast of "Sanctuary" was the front & centre draw of the television side of the awards for the mostpart. With the loss of "Stargate Universe" this year, the gang from Sanctuary made up a lot larger portion of this years TV representation. SGU did have 1 representitive there, Jennifer Spence, a nominee for Best supprting actress in a drama, but failed to win, losing out to Lucia Walters from "Life Unexpected" in their 1 & only nomination as well. Ryan Robbins did bring home a solo award for the Sanctuary cast in the Best Supporting male category.

Many of the more notable Vancouver based shows won some awards as well. Fox sci-fi hit "Fringe" lead all TV shows in wins with 3 (tied with Sanctuary) for Cinematogray, Production design & best guest actor for Michael Eklund. "Supernatural" won for best visual effect. "Smallville" won for best program in its final season. "Human Target" won for best stunt co-ordinator.

Smaller shows like "Blackstone", wich won 2 awards walked away with the more notable awards for TV acting. Carmen Moore won the best actress award. The best actor went to Callum Keith Rennie from "Shattered"

In the movie side of the awards, "Gunless" walked away with 4 awards including best prgraom, cinematography, production design & stunt co-ordinator. "Altitude", "Transparency" & "Fathers & Sons" won 2 awards each, the latter taking home best supporting actor Jay Brazeau. Several movies snagged 1 award each, including "Life, Above All", "Amazon Falls" which April Telek took best lead actress, "Tucker And Dale VS Evil" which Tyler Labine took best lead actor & "Repeaters" which Alexia Fast took best supporting actress for.

Other notable winners were Paul McGillion for best lead actor in a short drama movie "A Fine Young Man" (which lead the way with 4 wins in that section..including best program), Shirley Broderikc for best actress in a short drama "The Closer You Get To Canada". "Mighty Jerome" won 4 awards, including best documentary program. "The Haunting Hour" won 4 awards as well in best youth or childrens program, including best show & best performance for Richard Harmon.

"Hiccups" had 5 wins, including best comedy program & best performance for Nancy Robertson, that was the most of anyone at the awards.

First & foremost, thank you to the amazing crew of writers, directors, producers & behind the scenes staff of this series. Without your work, none of this would at all have been possible.

To the cast, I am sure some of you I will cross paths with again over the years. I wish you all the best of luck in future endeavours, but dont be upset if I always remember you as ".*insert character name here* from SGU", it is not that your new work is not good, its just that Stargate Universe was so amazing. To the few of you that I may not cross paths with again, thanks. Not just for your work on the show, but being so terrific off it. I have met every main cast member, and many of the secondary part time cast, each & every one of you was great in person. It is not rare to meet great & friendly actors or actresses, it IS rare for the entire cast to be that way, especially such a large cast. Your encounters with me is what drove me to give the show a chance, YOU made me a fan.

May 9,2011 is a day that should be mourned & celebrated in television land. Mourned, because it is the loss of another terrific, creative & entertaining program that will very likely end up getting replaced by some subpar fluff wrestling program or reality show. Celebrated, because for 2 years we were treated to television excellence, each month, the shows & scripts became better. The rough potential the early episodes showed blossomed to pure excellence as season 2 carried on its way to the premature series finale.

I found it painful & comforting that the show would end with Eli Wallace manning the ship by himself. Although Rush has always been the unofficial captain of the ship, Eli was more often than not, the one getting the Destiny out of any variety of sticky situations. It was painful in knowing we'll never get to see what the outcome was. Did Eli survive? Did the ship survive? Its comforting to know that with Eli at the helm, the Destiny's passengers will likely have succeeded in this daring task, as he will most certainly put the ship & the crews interests ahead of his own if it came to that.

So many questions still to answer. Does Dr. Park ever regain her sight back? Does TJ find a cure for ALS? Would Varro & TJ ever get together? Or are Young & TJ destined to end up together? Will Eli ever find someone? Will the ship ever finish its journey? Will the crew ever get home? So many uncertain questions without answers. Answers that we will probably never get now....UNLESS....Syfy has a brilliant epiphany down the road, sayyyy in a yr & 1/2?? Maybe Syfy sees some of their programs struggle that they hoped would thrive, with openings in the schedule, they resurrect SGU. Take into consideration time to write episodes, get cast together (assuming the majority are available?) & film it, they could be ready to return in about...3 years. Coincidence? Even if its a 1 off movie, it could wrap up loose ends.

Of course, the likelyhood of such a situation happening is low. A lot of luck & chips need to fall into place. Notable cast may have found stable full time roles on other projects by then, leaving large gaps in cast. Would the writers be able to string together a script in time? Not to mention Syfy admitting they made a mistake & giving the show 1 more chance.

I wont say good bye to this show, because I still have naive blind hope something will resurrect it (afterall I waited 2+ years for a Dead Like Me movie..and finally got 1). All I will say is, hopefully Elis' calculations are correct & we all get to see you all again when you wake up in 3 years.

But it will take even more luck & work than even the likes of the characters have had in surviving as many near deaths as they have.Last month, a post made by a site called deadline.com stated that Syfy, a station allegedly for science-fiction television, was going to cancel 1 of the few shows, on their quickly depleting list of original programs.

Stargate Universe (aka- SGU) cast & crew learned this news not thru a phone call, but a tweet. A 140 character or less update on their livelyhoods & careers. While the utter lack of class Syfy station has shown to their possible former employees is appalling, and should be a red flag warning sign to anyone who in the future thinks of working on a project for them, what is actually more disturbing is that they let this news slip out to a website to tell the world first. They didnt even have the respect, decency or professionalism to tell those who it affects themselves. They let a website tell it, then later used a 140 character or less post on twitter to confirm it. It really makes you wonder how Syfy president Dave Howe was ever given the job if this is how he handles such major issues.

The amazing part is that the station has currently 6 actual sci-fi style original program shows to its list. Of it, there is really only 3 they have that can without question say they outperform SGU at this time.

"Being Human" 1st season- Unproven "Caprica" Already Cancelled "Eureka" which started with 4.1M for the shows premiere episode, and is down to 2.5M now in its 4th season."Haven" in only its first season Unproven."Sanctuary" one show that has managed to capture an audience."Warehouse 13" which started with a 3.5M opening & has dropped off to 2.4M for its S2 closing.

While the numbers for SGU are below that of Eureka, Sanctuary & Warehouse 13, the fact still remains that Syfy had very few shows they can call their own & are often filling their television voids with marathons of shows that fans have very likely watched already, dont care for specifically, or more likely, already own the box sets of. Even the most ardent Star Trek fan can only sit thru their favorite versions of the show so many times.

This is a station thats been so desperate to fill time, it has resorted to adding Professional Wrestling & a reality game show about video game players to its table of shows. While I have been in the past a pro wrestling fan & have nothing against those that still are, reality is, it has no right being on a network solely devoted to sci-fi programming. But, it is a ratings juggernaut for a station & has low costs to them as WWE picks up much of the production costs. There in lies the problem. Syfy has sold out. Its no longer about creating programming for a subsection of society that tend to be loyal to a fault for products they like. Its about whoring themselves out for ever last penny they can, even at the cost of the stations soul.

This station has very few of its own shows, so why cancel 1 that has held its own in season 2? While season 1 saw a sharp drop in ratings, season 2 has been steady. There is something to be said about a show, on a station where almost everything it airs has massive ratings drops, is holding its own & not losing viewers. While season 1 was finding its feet & at times, may have been a bit long in getting to its points, season 2 has been intense, full of action & arguably amazing. If S1 was "decent", season 2 has been "absolutely amazing". If fans from S1 were to rejoin, they would be blown away at the changes & character development that has happened since then. but we may not see it develop beyond, because as it stands right now, its to be terminated at seasons end... despite being probably the best show currently on the network & arguably, one of the top sci-fi shows on all of TV.

The question is "what now?" for the show.

Various campaigns thru twitter & facebook have popped up to "Give SGU another season" & it certainly is a campign that has garnered a lot of attention. One campaign has garnered over 8500 fans on facebook (probably be 10,000.. if they hadnt spit in the face of the fans by alienating them thru actions depicted by the leader whom told a cast members mother to 'fuck off" in a disagreement), while smaller campaigns have popped up ranging from a few dozen to several hundred. These campaigns are so passionate about what they are doing, they now find themselves at odds over how to best promote the concepts & gameplans to save the show. But I am not going to get into the politics of fandom in here...this is about coming up with a gameplan for the show. This does show however, excessive devotion. To fight this hard, so hard you are even fighting with yourselves, means you want to see the idea succeed. It might be self destructive, or, it might be healthy.

While shows that are cancelled arent all that often saved by their networks, or new networks, it does happen. I can vouch for that on 2 different fronts. Two of my all time favorite shows, Dead Like Me, and Robson Arms both came back from essentially being dead for short lived returns. DLM managed a straight to DVD movie to quell its fans & while it was not anything near the 3rd season fans screamed for, petitioned for, wrote into Showtime & MGM for, and even held rallies for outside the offices, it was something...even if it was a hack version of something (try to not rant about Sarah Wynter's lack of acting skills right now...*deep breath*). The shows fans fought hard and got something. While Robson Arms was the little show that could. It first fought just to get on the air. After season 1, it sat, with no 2nd season announcement for over a year. Its second season aired 19 months after the final episode of S1 aired. It fought & clawed its way back from death to manage not just a 2nd season, but a 3rd too, before again, meeting an unjust fate by CTV. The fanbase for them was admittedly far smaller than DLM or SGU. But they were devoted & let the station know what they wanted....and they got it. The reality is, fighting sometimes works. All that being said, stats dont lie, lots of shows have campaigns to resurrect their programs, and most fail. But I can tell you, from my personal experiences, it can happen.

SGU is 1 that could have that lifeline to draw from. It has some things going for it, such as it is a Canadian based show. This means a Canadian station could look at a show, with an already developed fanbase & jump in & just fine tune things to their liking a little. The most likely choice for this is "Space" the Canadian version of Syfy (they have many of the same programs on), but Space isn't known for creating its own shows too much. In fact, they have already come out & said its not feasable. Like Syfy, who gets their approval from the pursestrings of a bigger media conglomerate (NBC), Space also is under the umbrella of a media conglomerate, CTVglobemedia, arguably the largest such television empire in Canada. Besides Space, the CTV empire is responsible for over 20 other stations from basic cable to pay per view channels in Canada. It is, without question, the most viable solution for a home for SGU to end up on if a Canadian company steps up.

The question becomes, how to convince them to run with the show. Well, the first fact is simple. SGU is filmed in Canada. As a Canadian station, Space is obligated to show a minimum amount of Canadian content. Sure, they have quite a bit already, including EVERY...SINGLE...SHOW Syfy carries right now, but this would give the CTV empire 1 more, which they also could move to their flagship station CTV for any variety of schedule filling needs (a weekend afternoon filler, or late night marathon materials)

The second fact needs to be about financial potential. They are business people afterall. Can they make a profit from this? Or, at least make it financially sensible thru selling off international distribution? The U.S. has 10Xs the population of Canada. It is also the primary financial centre for television. Ratings in America count exponentially more than ratings in Canada. So for a Canadian show to do well, they theoretically need far beyond 10% of the domestic numbers to warrant labelling something a success...unfortunately, the budget of the show still needs to stay comparable...so suddenly, you need to have better results than even that assuming U.S. numbers struggle to rise. That is where it gets complicated...proving that is possible without being able to show it first. I dont know what the numbers are on SGU showing on Space, but theoretically, if its doing about 150,000 households or more, it would be doing approximately 1.5Xs better here than in the U.S. currently, where its doing about 1.0M households a week. Those numbers may not be enough for CTV to take a chance on it by itself. This is where the idea of a split cost idea with a foreign station may come in.

Why couldnt the Canadian company work on a split deal with another country that admires their Sci-fi programming? Hello U.K?? We might have a business proposition for someone there. With a split cost between two stations in two different companies, it becomes quite financially feasable...then take into consideration distribution rights still in the rest of the world...well, how could it NOT look appealing?

The complexity of striking a deal to get the shows rights might be confusing as well. If Syfy has the rights, what might happen could be a deal where CTV, for the Space Channel, buys the rights from Syfy, in agreement, they give Syfy a deal on the U.S. rights for broadcasting it, taking away some bargaining power for looking for the best financial situation in the U.S. market.Maybe, there is even a deal, like how other shows from other networks have done it. Where CTV, for the Space Channel, doesnt actually buy the rights, but instead puts up some $ for the production costs to Syfy to continue making the show.If MGM is the owner of the shows rights, what do they want? Do they barter a deal where they get to choose the U.S. distributror? Do they get a nice deal on DVD sales? Or do they simply look at it as a dead asset that they can turn into liquid asset now & sell for whatever they can get?

Theres still even outside all of those question, the possibility that maybe they cant work out a deal to generate a 3rd season...so what about a few straight to DVD movie like Dead Like Me or Firefly managed? Simply to wrap up loose ends & complete the story? Correct me if I am wrong, but the sales for Dead Like Me: Life After Death were financial gold for the company. I vividly recall it being in the top 3 in Canada & top 10 in the U.S. opening day on Amazon. In the top 5 in Canada after a week & top 20 in the U.S. Unfortunately, Firefly was not something I followed when it did its movie, but I recall hearing a lot of buzz about it, I am sure its sales were just as incredible. If they put together a 2 or 3 movie set to wrap up the storlines (although its being suggested the creators are saying they cant do it with anything less than a season...you take what you can get).How can you, the fan get involved? The obvious answer- BUY SGU PRODUCTS. But also, make your voices heard. Let the stations know, let advertisers know, hell, even let the cast know, that they are wanted back.

Any potential suitors will want to see a healthy show. So alienating & abandonning it is not the best avenue. Support is. Buying the DVDs is good, buying episodes online is good, but in the end tv viewers matter the most. ALSO, key battle point people often overlook.....

MAKE NOTE OF WHAT PRODUCTS ARE PAYING FOR ADVERTISING TIME!!Seriously. This can make a difference. If you see a product being advertised during an episode, whether its first run, or a repeat, make note of it, and definitely let that company know that you saw their ad on an SGU broadcast. Whether its a short email to their site, or a phone call into a comments/questions/complaints line, let them know. They are, afterall, the ones who pull the pursestrings open or closed. DO NOT take commercials lightly, they have more influence than most board members. If the products tell Syfy, or other stations "we are getting a lot of recognition off this show..." trust me, they will find a way to magically come up with the $ in their budget to keep making it.

Theres a lot of questions that I personally cant answer, but this does show that there are a multitude of potential options still out there for SGU to breathe more life. It is just a matter of whoever is holding the keys, to hand them to someone willing to take over.

Saving SGU is a real possibility. It will just take all hands on deck to steer the Destiny to that outcome... to complete its mission.Buy SGU Blu-Ray, DVDs & single online episodes on Amazon(U.S.) http://amzn.to/fNmE0K (Canada) http://amzn.to/elGBzqWant to learn more about the campaign or the cast? Check them out on twitter or facebook.

There was going to be a long, detailed 15 paragraph blog about this...but instead, you get cliff notes versions because the host of this site deleted my hour long job without any reason.So. Below are some pics from the weekend that Stargate Universe headed to & came back from, the 2010 Gemini Awards in Toronto.Best Actor Robert Carlyle, Louis Ferreira, Brian J Smith, Ming Na, David Blue, Julia Benson, Elyse Levesque, Alaina Huffman, Jennifer Spence, Jamil Walker Smith, Peter Kelamis & Patrick Gilmore were the people I saw over the weekend. All signed, except Alaina Huffman, because her clearly annoyed husband was with her. I had heard horror stories of him not liking people asking for autographs, and her demeanour validated these claims, as he glared with quite a bit of displeasure at the grand total of 3 people there waiting & she seemed eager to just get out of there. We had a good talk with Patrick Gilmore about the weekend, the partying & the skills of Peter Kelamis as a human bowling star.We talked with Julia Benson at length about the weekend, the food & at times, lack there of at the parties & Canadian television as a whole.We talked with Elyse Levesque about the weekend and the fact that her friends & herself will be working on a new video for her music "group Coupla Hot Chicks...Maybe Three once SGU wraps this week.I asked Robert Carlyle if I could get a photo of him holding the Gemini, which he answered with a fairly emphatic no. Him & Louis Ferreira also chatted about the photos my friend had & how great they were, and Robert was quite pleased upon returning when my friend handed him some of the ones he liked that he saw when departing.There is likely lots I am leaving out...but after putting in a hour writing the last one & having it deleted...I really dont have the patience to go into detail again.Congratulations Robert on your win.I am going have to say the cast of SGU is the nicest on TV. Its their attitudes that made me give the show a chance. I'm almost done the 1st season now, and glad I gave it a chance now.

The cast of SGU was well represented at the 2010 Leo Awards. With 17 nominations, they had plenty of their cast on hand as nominees & presenters.

There was no less than 7 cast members in attendance for various reasons. Among them Julia Benson (WINNER- Best Supporting Performance by a female in a Dramatic Series), David Blue, Patrick Gilmore (Nominee- Best Supporting Performance by a male in a Dramatic Series), Elyse Levesque, Lou Diamond Phillips, Jennifer Spence (Nominee- Best Supporting Performance by a female in a Dramatic Series) and Brian J Smith.

The cast members were exceptionally accomodating with autograph requests on the red carpet. Many of them even taking the time to pose for photos with fans & dealers alike, despite not being on the media side of the ropes.

As always, Lou Diamond Phillips was front & centre in the class department. His castmates were all terrific, but LDP was truly a step above everyone at the awards, as autograph request after request, photo request after request, random questions about the show, poker & general life were asked, all answered as well as he was capable of. His performance on the red carpet has earned him a spot in my Best celebs list.